A summary brought by the daughter of Florence Arthaud, worried that a biopic in preparation on the deceased navigator gives “a bad image” of her mother and who wanted to obtain a copy of the script, was rejected on Tuesday by the Paris court.
In its judgment, the court considers that “none of the elements produced” by Marie Arthaud-Lingois “confirms the fears she expresses of seeing her mother’s life exposed” in a degrading manner likely to undermine his memory”.
Marie Arthaud-Lingois maintained that certain elements of Yann Queffélec’s book “The sea and beyond”, which inspired the feature film directed by Géraldine Danon, “affected the memory” of her mother and feared that the scenario of the film “repeats these attacks and in turn constitutes an interference in his own private life”, according to the interim order issued on Tuesday.
She wanted to obtain a copy of the final script in order to “establish and preserve the proof of facts on which a future action on the merits could depend” against the director and the producers of the film.
Marie Arthaud-Lingois mentioned in particular certain passages of the book where the navigator “is alcoholic, neglected or even in lack of notoriety”, and which gives “a bad image of her mother”.
The court stressed that the book relates the life of Florence Arthaud “in the form of a fictionalized account” and that this account “is itself intended to serve as a new work of fiction”.
The judges also noted that Géraldine Danon had expressed “the bonds of friendship that she herself maintained with the navigator”.
The actress and director is the wife of navigator Philippe Poupon and the couple was close to Florence Arthaud, the first woman to win the Route du Rhum in 1990.
In 2020, Géraldine Danon began writing a film devoted to the life of the one who was nicknamed “the little fiancée of the Atlantic”, who died five years earlier in a helicopter accident in Argentina. on the set of a television show, at the age of 57.
